Big picture news stuff

§ NBC has made it official that they are putting Heroes out of its misery after four years of steadily diminishing returns. The show debuted to dynamite ratings and fan reaction but has gone downhill ever since. The show hasn’t aired since February, and the peacock is considering a TV movie to wrap up loose ends, but the show is so expensive, it’s still only a possibility. The show may have sucked in recent seasons, but it did give us Masi Oka, Hayden Panettiere, Milo Ventimiglia and Zack Quinto, so it certainly gave us lots of nerdlebrity news.

AND on the bright side, THR reports that NBC has a pilot called The Cape in the works, so they haven’t given up on the superhero genre entirely, even if Edna Mode would NOT approve.

§ Nikki Finke reported last Friday on a tunning turn in the Superman copyright case: Warners new, top gun lawyer is suing Siegel family attorney Marc Toberoff claiming he has a financial stake in the outcome and would end up owning most of the rights to Superman once copyright is transferred back to the families. Finke writes:

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It’s a hardball and some might say also despicable tactic by Petrocelli and the studio’s new general counsel John Rogovin (hiding behind DC Comics), especially because it hinges on documents stolen from Toberoff’s office by a Toberoff employee. (I’ve learned that Warner Bros claims the documents mysteriously “arrived” on its doorstep and that the employee was a lawyer in Toberoff’s firm and a “whistleblower”. Toberoff has indicated that something much more nefarious may have happened. (See his response below.) What’s also ironic about Petrocelli’s tactic is that, when he defended Disney against the Slesinger family’s Winnie The Pooh underpaid royalty claims, he was able to get the entire case thrown out of court by alleging that the Slesinger’s were basing some of their documentation on paperwork “stolen” from a dumpster on the Disney lot. Oh, how the worm has tuned.

But then she also writes:

Warner Bros has to be careful, very careful, not to piss off the Superman fans who are steadfastly in the Shuster and Siegal corners.

meaning she had evidently never read the comments here or anywhere else including ehr own bord, where the “greedy” Siegel and Shuster families are constantly repudiated for trying to steal from the nice corporations.

Heidi MacDonald is an award-winning editor/journalist with 20 years. An editor at Disney and DC Comics, she edited such titles as The Lion King, Scooby Doo, Swamp Thing, and Y: The Last Man. She cohosts Publishers Weekly’s graphic novel podcast More to Come.